Hank Drennon

Having been born quite young, I naturally began life working in stoneware.  Passing maturity however, my interests returned to the colors and story-telling qualities of ‘Maiolica’.  I dubbed my  works ‘Milagro del Rio Brazos Pots’ -  for the miracle of clay and for the magic of my grandfather’s farm on the Brazos .  I made my first pots there, knee-deep in mud.  Mud.  Memories.  Story-telling. 

In school in Chicago I learned a lot about making pots.  And later even more from potters and friends.  Then, working with Talavera decorators in Dolores Hidalgo - to learn about brushwork and design - I experienced for the first time the shared language of all potters.  My Spanish is poor and my English almost passable – but I do speak clay, and I’ve found  that in every busy or obscure place where potters  continue their work (from the villages of Macedonia,  through Zululand via Gaza and from Italy to Greece and back to Blanco) -  anywhere at all there are potters -  that our language is the same:  We speak  Form.  Shape. Function.  Beauty.  Expression.  Color.  Tradition.  History.  Stories.  Mud.

The most seductive quality of Maiolica to me has been its abilty to express so unmistakably the place, times and culture in which it was made.  We all have to come from somewhere -  and so in tying all of this together, these pots of mine may have references to 15th century Italian Maiolica interwoven with closer to home icons of Uzis, Saturday-Night Specials and Marilyn,  recall Moorish geometry with desktops and dogs as others revere carpenters and nurses in Blue and White Delft.